Touch the future. Or not!

Today, almost all personal tech gadgets work on touch-based input. Like every innovation in technology that seems to be a rage at present, this too will probably become redundant in a couple of years. But does that mean we regress to the old-world physical keys and keyboard interface? Far from it!

Look ma, no hands

Based on a technology called Mimesign (developed by Elliptic Labs), your next trick to manipulate your brand new touch screen tablet, handset or even your Smart TV could be to make simple gestures in thin air. It'll be possible to operate devices by touchless gestures. Earlier this year, an iPad dock unveiled by Elliptic Labs at CES 2011 displayed a touchless sensor based on ultrasonic technology that lets you change tracks with just a swipe in the air.

The Microsoft Kinect has already brought motion-sensing devices to our homes but what might make the experience much more immersive is something along the lines of SixthSense, a natural, gestural user interface that lets you integrate and manipulate information within the physical space around you.

The $350-prototype is a bundle of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. These are integrated in a pendant-like device with the projector and camera hooked up to your mobile phone. Any application on your mobile device can be projected on any surface around you. You can play around with the interface as the camera tracks your gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques.

Holographic delight

Those of you who've seen the Robin Williams-starrer Flubber might remember the curvaceous holographic avatar that his pet robot ‘Weebo' takes one fine night! Well, you might not have a virtual femme fatale walking about your room but in a couple of years you might certainly own devices that project holographic displays to serve the function of a mobile phone or even a laptop! All you might need is a device capable of projecting a mobile application - Phone dialer, Skype, messaging client, Sudoku…you get the drift – on any surface available. An Israeli visual communications designer, Ivan Tihienko, had come up with a concept holographic UI called Ringo that could even let you play Air Hockey by projecting it on your bedroom floor or on the streets. This kind of user interface opens up tons of new ways to interact with your digital devices. If you're looking for directions, your mobile device could just project it around you on to the road and guide you till your destination, you could send messages SWPYE-ing across your bedroom wall or even play Angry Birds on Page 2 of your science textbook without your folks ever finding out!

The real transformer

Imagine tapping a thin layer of plastic by your bedside to hit snooze on your alarm-clock, pull out and stretch the same to read the morning news and retract it to make a call to your boss telling him you'll be late for work just because you wanted to finish that episode of South Park, right on the same display!

All this and more could be possible with OLED/AMOLED displays that can be more flexible than Natalie Portman in Black Swan! Less than a month ago, the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University and Universal Display Corporation released a full-colour, flexible AMOLED display prototype for use in thin, lightweight, bendable and unbreakable devices capable of displaying full-colour, full-motion video. Funded by the US Army, the research resulted in 3.8-inch diagonal QVGA displays that could potentially be used in ultralight portable devices. Sony had been the first one to showcase a flexible OLED ultra-thin display three years ago, but is yet to launch a commercially viable product. With lots of research and attention going the flexible display way we might not have to wait for too long till we get our hands on one.

Time for mind games

Think. That's all you might have to do to execute any task you want to on a system in the future. Suppose you want Mario to jump on the Koopa Troopas coming his way, all you have to do is think of it and your user interface will make it happen on screen. Emotiv Systems, a company that has been working on brain-computer interfaces has a designed a headset, Emotiv EPOC, that lets you do exactly this. A bunch of enthusiastic hackers hooked up an Emotiv EPOC headset along with a software hack and tried it with the PC version of Angry Birds and Voila! The birds definitely do hurl themselves at the pigs when all the player did was just sit and will it to happen! Designed with 14 electrodes, the EPOC can recognise four mental states - excitement, boredom, meditation and frustration – as well as rotations, movement and facial expressions like laughing, smiling etc. Now, this is just being marketed as the $299 gaming headset, but imagine the possibilities of a neurotechnology-based interface! All computer peripherals might become redundant when you can type on-screen as you think of the letters, click when you wink and start Skype-ing with your best friend with just a smile!

Mirror on the wall

Remember Tom Cruise magically leafing through photographs and videos on an uber-cool transparent glass wall with his bare hands? Well, it won't be just a case of special effects on the silver screen anymore. One of the science advisers who was invited to work on the interface shown in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, John Underkoffler, has designed the ‘Spatial Operating Environment'. The interface that works like the real-life version of the film's amazingly impressive, “tai chi-meets-cyberspace computer interface” could possibly be one of the most exciting interfaces that could be available in the future.

Insisting that using a mouse, a screen and a keyboard to interact with a computer system seems rather unnecessary, Underkoffler has done away with these peripherals and build an interface that can be “transferred” from one surface to another. For example, if you are browsing through your summer vacation pics on a display, you can pass it on to a second one with a swipe of your hand when you are done with it. Notwithstanding the increased chances of carpal tunnel syndrome, this interface can let you interact with multiple screens and more than one person within the workspace.

Get naughty with see-throughs

No, we aren't talking about Liz Hurley's saree drapes. The glass on your bathroom flashing your POA for the day, the bottom of the car's windshield with directions or traffic updates is the kind of freedom that transparent displays might provide in the future.

We've already seen sneak previews of what's coming with devices like Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness with its transparent monochromatic screen and Samsung IceTouch PMP with its transparent AMOLED screen. But instead of a miniature, semi-transparent screen Samsung has given us a peek of its new 22-inch transparent AMOLED displays. These could find a fit in advertising, heads-up displays for automobiles, aircrafts and probably even deep-sea divers or hardcore gamers coupled with a 3D display. And this is just the beginning of the revolution; all of us might be cooler versions of the Terminator or Robocop walking down the street about 10 years from now.

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